


Crossroads

by nightscape



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Halloween, Humour with the tiniest sprinkle of fluff, M/M, Mentions of death and dead people in general, angels and demons!au, minewt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 12:20:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5004601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightscape/pseuds/nightscape
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the countless years Newt’s spent as an angel, nobody has ever interfered with his job. Especially not obnoxious pricks from the Underworld.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crossroads

**Author's Note:**

> Happy October, guys! In the spirit of Halloween, I decided to explore an AU containing elements of fantasy. I don’t have a religion, so I apologize for any inaccurate portrayals of anything that might belong to yours. I basically took the terms “angel” and “demon” and ran, screaming, into the sunset with them. 
> 
> TL;DR: None of this should be taken seriously.

Newt’s first encounter with the demon falls on a Saturday. He knows this because the huge calendar on the wall of the hospital ward tells him so.

His work is simple- once he receives his list of assignments from the Head Angel, he’ll pop down to Earth to pick up every soul on the list and take them up to Heaven. It’s a twenty-four-seven kind of job, but it’s smooth sailing. In the countless years he’s spent as an angel, nobody has ever interfered.

Especially not obnoxious pricks from the Underworld.

 

The first destination on his list is a small hospital in Colorado. As usual, he sinks into a chair in a corner of the room and patiently waits for the woman to notice his presence.

Newt knows that it isn’t exactly necessary to give people time to realize they’re dead, but he likes to do it anyway. It saves him a lot of explaining. After decades of having to rattle off a hundred and one reasons why a person should just accept their death and follow him to Heaven, often while shielding himself from verbal and physical assault (he’ll never forget the day a lady screamed and nearly stabbed him to second death with her stilettos after he introduced himself), he’s learned to take things slow and let people figure things out for themselves. He doesn’t blame them, of course- if a stranger in a white suit shows up in your room and claims that you’ve just kicked the bucket, it’s only natural to freak out.

This woman is pushing her eighties, Newt observes. From the way she lies in bed and calmly stares out the window as the medical staff wheel her physical body from the room, she has no idea that her time has come. Elderly folks tend to give angels less trouble, so Newt decides to reveal himself after just a minute or two.

“Hello,” he says pleasantly. The elderly woman glances around for a while, clearly puzzled, but eventually finds the source of the voice.

“Oh, hello, dearie.” Her eyes crinkle as she smiles. “You look familiar. Are you my grandson?”

“I’m Newt, your angel. You see, I--”

“Luke, is it?” The woman squints at him. “I’m terribly sorry, my hearing isn’t what it used to be. What lovely hair you have. Are you my grandson?”

Newt leans in closer and raises his voice a little. “No, my name is _Newt_. You’ve passed away, and I’m here to take you to Heaven.”

“What was that, Luke?”

With an inward sigh, the angel stands and walks over to the bed. “You,” he says, pointing at her. “Died.” He draws a finger across his neck. “I’m an angel.” He follows up with his best attempt at miming the words, flapping his arms and tracing invisible halos in the space above his head.

Newt is in the midst of questioning his career choices when a figure materializes on the other side of the bed without warning, making him jump. It’s another young man with dark hair and even darker eyes, dressed in black leather from head to toe. Judging from his mode of entrance and taste in fashion, it’s all too easy to guess where he’s from.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Newt deadpans. “The Underworld?”

“Damn right,” the devastatingly handsome stranger says with a smirk. He leans against the bed frame, giving Newt a once-over. “Did it hurt? When you fell from Heaven?”

Newt crosses his arms. “Don’t try any of those 21st-century pick-up lines on me, demon. Why are you here?”

Said demon pushes away from the bed with a snort of contempt. “Jeez, who shoved a pitchfork up your ass? I’m just here to do my job. And I have a _name_. It’s Minho.”

“Minnow?” The elderly woman peers up at him with a pleasantly confused smile on her face. “What a funny name. We used to go fishing for those when I was little. Are you my grandson?”

Minho raises an eyebrow, then looks back up at Newt. “She doesn’t know yet?”

“I tried explaining, but nope,” Newt replies with a shake of his head. Then he frowns. “Hold on, you said you have a job here?”

“No, I’m here to have tea with the goddamn Queen,” the demon snaps. “I don’t know why both our bosses sent us to claim her, but I don’t exactly give a damn either. Now if you’ll excuse me, angel, I’m going to escort her--”

“Hold your hellhounds,” Newt says. “You’re not taking her _anywhere_. What has this lady done to deserve an eternity of torture?”

"How the heck am I supposed to know?" Minho's fingers curl around the bed rails, his knuckles turning white. "I'm a demon, not a freaking psychic!"

"Then let me take her. Even Hell makes mistakes sometimes, doesn't it?"

"I could say the same about your fairy kingdom," Minho growls.

"Luke?" The old woman's frail voice breaks the heated silence that follows. She sounds weary. "You shouldn't be fighting like this, you know. You'll disturb the neighbors."

Newt nearly blushes, a wave of self-consciousness washing over him when he realizes they'd been bickering right over the woman's head. "It's _Newt_ ," he says, leaning down to take the spirit's hand in his. "And don't worry, I'll protect you."

He casts a wary glance in Minho's direction, only to see the demon staring at him with wide eyes. "What?"

"Your name is Newt?"

Newt makes a show of checking his imaginary watch. "I believe I said that two seconds ago."

This time, Minho doesn't bother to retort with another sassy remark. Without a smirk or sneer on his face, he looks oddly vulnerable. "Newt," he says quietly, almost pleadingly, "do you remember how you came to be?"

The angel doesn't respond. Taking advantage of Minho’s distractedness, he tightens his grip on the woman's bony wrist, squeezes his eyes shut and reappears above the clouds.

He regrets it, though, because Minho’s voice echoes in the back of his mind for weeks, repeating the unanswered question over and over again.

 

 

The second time they meet, Minho gets there first.

Having travelled to nearly every corner of the world, Newt really isn’t surprised to find himself standing in a prison cell somewhere in Bristol. What surprises him is the familiar figure leaning against the bars, holding a conversation with the spirit of the deceased inmate.

“Well, if it isn’t your feathery highness,” Minho says, a corner of his lips pulling up into a smirk. “Come to join old Charlie’s farewell party, have you?”

Newt rolls his eyes. He can’t decide if he’s more annoyed by the fact that another administrative screw-up has brought him face to face with the demon once more, or relieved that he has a chance to get the answers he’s longed for.

But answers can wait. Right now, he has a task to complete. He turns to the inmate, a beefy man who can’t be any younger than sixty. “Sir, are you aware that this man right here-” he gestures to Minho- “is a messenger of Hell, and will lead you to eternal damnation?”

Charlie’s eyes widen in panic. “This young man told me he would take me to the afterlife, but he mentioned nothing about Hell! Please,” he rasps, grabbing Newt by the shoulders, “I never meant to kill that man, but nobody believed me. Please don’t send me down there, I beg of you!”

“My bad,” Minho says, not sounding one bit apologetic. He pulls a black cloth out of his chest pocket and clamps it over Charlie’s nose, and the prisoner slumps to the ground with a snore.

Newt shoots one of his rare deadly glares at Minho. “You lied to him.” Spending time around a demon is definitely making him act less and less like an angel.

“Technically, I wasn’t deceiving him,” Minho points out. “Look, can we just cut the crap--”

“No. If I’ve been sent here to get him, it means he hasn’t committed a crime severe enough to warrant punishment in Hell.”

“What makes you think that, angel?”

"I see no point in trying to explain anything to a heartless demon such as yourself."

In that instant, something snaps. Minho's pupils flash red for a split second, and Newt stumbles backwards in alarm. "Don't ever say that," the demon snarls, advancing until Newt feels his back hit the cold iron bars. “Do you think I chose this for myself? Sure, I must have done some pretty messed-up things in my life to be taken into the Underworld, but I don’t remember any of that. All I know is that if I had a choice, I would _not_ be here.”

“So?” Newt breathes, trying not to focus on the fact that Minho has literally pressed him up against the prison bars. “You’re still going to drag another possibly undeserving soul into the pits of Hell.”

Minho drops his hands and takes a step backwards. “I’ll have you know, _angel_ , that whenever I happen to lock horns with one of your kind, they end up either injured or dead. I’ll do anything to get my job done, to spare myself the punishment from returning to my boss empty-handed. But I have made one exception to that.”

“And when was that?”

“The day you died.”

Newt blinks. “What?”

The demon’s expression is unreadable. "None of that matters now, does it? You don't remember at all."

"No, it does. I _want_ to know."

Minho closes his eyes and lets out a deep breath. "Alright. Take Charlie up first, and meet me back here. Do it now, before I change my mind."

 

A minute later, Newt reappears in the cell, blinking rapidly to let his eyes readjust to the dimness. Minho is sitting on the edge of a moth-eaten mattress, watching him. He looks a lot calmer.

“Thought you might not come back,” Minho says with a small laugh. He only seems to be half-joking.

“Well… I’m here now, aren’t I?” Newt walks over to the mattress and plops himself down beside the other man. He can’t deny that he still feels a little jumpy around the first demon he’s encountered on the job, but curiosity overpowers everything else.

“First things first,” the demon says with almost comical seriousness. “I’m sorry for… y’know. I have a really short fuse. You get that when you spend at least twelve hours a day surrounded by fire and screaming people.”

Newt is taken aback by the sincerity in his voice. “Well then, I’m sorry too,” he mumbles, staring at the grimy floor. It’s fascinating, the way his white dress shoes contrast so starkly with Minho’s obsidian boots. “You’re probably not as heartless as I said you were.”

“Glad you know. Now, let’s see how much of your life story I can remember.”

“Yes, go on.”

“Just kidding, I don’t know anything about your life,” Minho says with a wry smile. “But I remember your death very clearly. It was over a century ago, in South London- I’d been sent there to get you. You were run over by a carriage while escaping from the police, it was such a mess. Ugh.” He wrinkles his nose at the memory.

“Bloody hell,” Newt murmurs. “Why was I running from the police in the first place?”

“You stole a few loaves of bread. If you want more details… the bread soaked up a surprising amount of blood.” The demon pauses, taking a sideways glance at Newt’s expression of disgust. “Alright, sorry, didn’t mean to gross you out. Anyway, your sister was the only family you had left, and she was starving. You did it to save her, not yourself. I took one look at you and decided that I just couldn’t do it.”

“Something doesn’t quite add up here. If you were sent to claim me, how in the world did I end up in Heaven?”

“I was just getting around to that. As I was saying, I didn’t want to take you with me. You deserved so much better. At that moment, an angel named Teresa turned up- as you know, accidents sometimes happen, Heaven and Hell call dibs on the same soul, and all that jazz. Although I knew I might be slaughtered for it, I turned you over to the angel.”

Newt opens his mouth to ask another question, but Minho ploughs on. “My boss wouldn’t hear any of my explanations. In the Underworld, they don’t give a flying crap who gets dragged through the Gates, accident or not. All they care about is keeping the torture chambers full. Since I lost them a soul, my punishment was spending a full fortnight chained to a wooden board, having each nail pried off my hands and feet and replaced, only for the cycle to be repeated countless times.” He flinches slightly as he recounts the torture, then shrugs it off. "But I guess some people are worth getting punished for."

Even though he knows it’s not his fault, Newt can’t help but feel a sharp pang of guilt. “Thank you,” is all he can manage.

Minho shakes his head. “No, thank _you_. After decades of facing nothing but cruelty and sin, you made me realize that the world wasn’t all bad. And I refused to believe it back then, but… maybe I could actually do something right, no matter what everyone else thought of me. I lost my faith over the years, but seeing you again that day reminded me of everything. You’re the only good thing that’s happened to me in this life.”

The demon mulls over something for a while, his face obscured by the shadows. “Just in case we never meet again,” he says, and Newt feels warm arms embrace him with surprising tenderness, catching him off-guard. Then, just as quickly as it happened, Minho is gone.

 

 

The third time they meet, Newt is convinced that somebody up there is deliberately messing with him.

It's been a whole year since Newt was given an unexpected hug in a jail cell far away, and the memory is beginning to fade the way an old photograph would. The angel takes one glance at the streets of Los Angeles, overrun by children dressed as Disney characters and lugging baskets of candy around, and knows exactly what day it is.

Unfortunately, nobody celebrates Halloween up in Heaven, which means work as usual. Today, Newt has been sent to deal with a teenager whose life has just been taken by a rather large bus. A hit-and-run, he was told. The boy, Thomas, takes one look at his body lying in the middle of the road and moans, "Mom is so going to kill me."

 _None of this would've happened if you hadn't jaywalked with your headphones on, you little shit_ , Newt wants to say. Keeping in mind that he's supposed to represent all things good and holy, he doesn't actually say it- instead, he smiles and extends a hand to Thomas. "Don't worry, we have a place in Heaven for you."

"Seriously?" a voice says from somewhere behind Newt. "That costume is downright _insulting_. Good thing this angel is here to give you a lift, kid, because even Satan himself wouldn't let those cheap-ass plastic horns past the gates of Hell."

Without turning around, Newt fights to hold back a grin. He'd recognize that sass from miles away. "What brings you here, Minho?"

"I guess you must be a magnet," Minho says, coming to stand beside Newt on the sidewalk, "because I'm attracted to you."

"Will you stop with the bloody pick-up lines--"

"Hold on," Thomas says, interrupting the reunion. "Am I tripping? Because that would explain my current situation a whole lot better."

"It would explain your terrible costume choices a whole lot better," Minho mutters under his breath.

Thomas looks wounded. "Not my fault that I was given an hour’s notice before my friend’s Halloween party, man. The horns and pitchfork were the best things I could find at Target."

"Unfortunately, I could not care less," the demon says, turning back to Newt. "How did he die in the first place? He’s not sick or anything- he should have a good sixty more years to go."

Newt steps aside to give Minho a clearer view of the lifeless body on the road, where a crowd is just beginning to form.

"Oh."

Thomas' shoulders slump in defeat. "Okay, so I'm not high on anything. I'm dead. Right?"

"Dead as a doornail," Minho cheerfully assures him. Then he furrows his brow, deep in thought. "Although, based on what I've recently been told, the new law allows us to change that."

 _New law?_ "Pardon?"

"What, have you been living under a rock the past week? It was agreed upon by Heaven and Hell that in case of a boo-boo such as this, the assigned angel and demon have the right to both reject the deceased, thus sending the soul back to the realm of the living. Saves both parties the trouble of having to sort out the conflict."

Newt's mouth forms an 'O' as he processes the words. "So you're saying that we can bring him back to life if we both agree upon it?"

"Yes, basically."

"I have no idea what’s going on but oh my god, please do it," Thomas begs. "I'll be eternally grateful if you do. I'll even burn the horns if the biker jacket dude wants me to, I swear!"

"Please stop talking," Minho tells him. He points to the spot where the boy's corpse lies, bruised and bleeding. "Go over there, and sit on top of your body. We're gonna push you back in. We gotta do this fast, or else people are going to start freaking out because some dumb kid’s heart stopped beating for five whole minutes before he woke up like freakin’ Sleeping Beauty."

Thomas goes weak in the knees with relief, but quickly shuts up and does as instructed. Passers-by are murmuring to one another and holding out their smartphones to snap photos of the accident scene, and Newt thanks the heavens for their invisibility.

Minho squats down beside Thomas, and firmly grips the spirit’s left arm. “All comfy? Good. Newt, grab hold of his other arm and push him down on the count of three. One… two… _three_.”

Both Minho and Newt push down with all their might and the boy’s spirit falls back into his body, as if being sucked into a fan. Thomas wakes up in the middle of the road with a shudder, eliciting a collective gasp from the crowd. "It's a miracle!" somebody cries out.

"Miracle, my ass," the demon snorts as he and Newt weave their way out of the buzzing crowd.

Newt gives him a gentle nudge. "Give yourself some credit," he smiles. "You brought somebody back to life. It was a wonderful thing, and you made it happen."

Minho doesn't answer, but when Newt steals a glance at his face, he's grinning from ear to ear.

 

The paramedics arrive a few minutes later, and Thomas is rushed to a nearby hospital. As the ambulance peels away, lights flashing and siren wailing, Minho and Newt stand under the awning of a bookstore and watch it disappear around the corner.

"Well," Minho says casually, "it seems like we might be seeing each other around for a while. What say we screw them duties and go get some coffee?"

"Sounds good to me."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact #1: This was not supposed to happen. "Let's write a short Halloween drabble", I said. "It'll only take an hour," I said. 3 days and 3,000 words later... damn it.
> 
> Fun fact #2: I was so tempted to name this Be Careful and Don't Die (Or Minho Will Drag You To Hell).


End file.
